Hyper Anna data scientist

Patrick Taylor

At just 22 years old, Patrick Taylor has chased and landed a job he loves. But he didn’t get it on his first attempt.

Patrick applied to fast-growing startup business Hyper Anna, a company that has built an AI powered data analyst of the same name, straight out of uni. “I was too inexperienced to get the job,” Patrick says. But he knew he could fix that.

After graduating Patrick took a job as an actuarial analyst, but he agreed to work nights and weekends when offered a side project in data science. “A friend I’d made during an internship at uni had seen me doing a bunch of statistics stuff. His Dad ran a company that was trying to do some basic coding and data science stuff, so my friend said ‘I know this guy.’”

The data science project analysed essays submitted for a writing competition. “I thought, ok this is really awesome,” says Patrick. “I was finding out stuff and learning things that I hadn’t learnt before. That gave me a bit of exposure and experience.

“At the same time I was still interested in Hyper Anna because I liked what they did. And the more I discovered the data science industry, the more I wanted it to be my full-time job,” says Patrick.

Patrick pursued Hyper Anna. Only four months after his first application he sent the manager an email. “I listed what had happened in that time, how I’d picked up contractual work, and I’d also gone to a conference in Melbourne regarding data science and sport, which was something I was really passionate about. I think that initiative helped,” says Patrick. Hyper Anna hired him.

“I come to work every day excited because I’m solving different problems all the time,” says Patrick.

Patrick’s experience has taught him to focus on building skills. “When you’re picking a university degree, don’t think of the job, think of the skills you’re going to pick up,” says Patrick. “I picked up a few skills at uni and quite a few skills in other jobs, and it was that skill picking up that has got me where I am today.”

Patrick’s pathway to a data science career

>> Bachelor Science (Adv. Mathematics), University of Sydney.

>> Summer internship, Nasdaq

>> Actuarial Analyst, Rice Warner

>> Contractual data scientist, Literatu

>> Data Scientist, Hyper Anna

“The more I discovered the data science industry, the more I wanted it to be my full-time job.”